While many construction companies purchase and maintain their own capital equipment, Madison Construction, a subsidiary of Stor-Age, a property developer focusing on storage space, has opted to hire all its equipment. According to the company, it shies away from becoming involved in ancillary construction related activities, such as operating and maintaining “yellow” equipment, including its tower crane requirements, in order to run efficient teams that only focus on building.
“We did consider buying a few pre-owned cranes a while back, but decided against it. Owning cranes is certainly not our profession. We are adept at building and definitely don’t want to start dabbling in the intricacies of storing, maintaining and transporting them. Apart from being extremely specialised, it is very costly and time consuming,” says Leon de Klerk, contracts manager at Madison Construction.
Madison Construction hires its tower cranes from SA French, a division of Torre Lifting Solutions. Currently, a Potain MCT 88 crane is being used to lift scaffolding and raw material in the preparation stages of a project in Essexwold, Johannesburg. Once preparation has been completed, it will move onto handling the formwork and building materials as well as help place the trusses and steel sheeting to complete the roof. In addition, it will be put to good use lifting pallets containing all the necessary finishings that will be unpacked inside the structure and installed throughout after the roof has been completed.
The crane can lift 1.3 t at 50 metres and has a maximum lifting capacity of 5 t at 13.7 metres. It is equipped with a 52 metre jib and chassis, and its hook height is 30 metres. Werner Killian, a Madison Construction contract manager who was involved in the design of the civil works on this site and is overseeing another Stor-Age development in Sunninghill where a Potain MC85B is being put through its paces, says service and price are important to the contractor.
De Klerk adds that he is extremely impressed by the condition of the crane being used at the Essexwold site, which reveals the extent of the preparation undertaken on SA French’s crane fleet before being delivered to site. “I am impressed by the features of the Potain MCT 88. The 160 t unit is actually larger than the 100 t unit initially requested for the job. SA French did not have the smaller unit on hand so it made the larger one available to Madison Construction at the same rental rate. As Stor-Age mobilises Madison Construction crews to double it storage space over the next five years, we will definitely be using more SA French cranes.”